


DA037: Last Dance

by Rhion



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-11
Updated: 2012-10-11
Packaged: 2017-11-16 02:57:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/534725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhion/pseuds/Rhion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laran walked away, for once too fast for Zevran to keep up. Now it was time to catch up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	DA037: Last Dance

**Author's Note:**

> Based off of Croaky/Teapirate’s Laran and Zev comics, particularly the Tainted III one. Was randomly mumbling with Cappy and Tea during Tea’s Livestream of doing this, and I tried to resist, truly I tried. Didn’t bloody work obviously. It never does. Why do I bother fighting?
> 
> Unbeta’d, written in an hour of angst-orgy.

The note was something Zevran kept close to his heart. A folded, worn and battered piece of parchment, the last words Laran had imparted to him, to watch over Kallio who was due any day with her first child and take care, along with the small Joining amulet that Laran had always worn beside the earring. So Zevran had, rather than following every instinct that screamed that he should catch up, that he should be on the next boat to Ferelden, preferably some lean and fast stooping hawk of a vessel. To close the distance as swiftly as was possible, to walk beside Laran into the dark and deep. Together. 

But he was tired now, so very tired. _He_ did not dream of Blights. _He_ dreamed of something worse than the Blights, of the Tainted song crooning to a scream in his skull. No, he had horrifying and endless visions of Laran in the dark, alone, reduced to nothing but an animated corpse, mindless. Alone. So utterly alone. And in the _dark_. 

Laran didn’t hate the dark, wasn’t afraid of it, but Zevran had noticed a peculiar habit at some point, that his big shem had always leaned or swiveled towards him when in any room, particularly a dim one. Like a sunflower, the great head turning towards the light constantly. There was also the teasing, that missed teasing that had been the vital flow between them, the way Laran would press his face into his collarbone, inhaling the way the hot and spiced oils he wore made him smell. In that teasing, once Laran had said he smelled like the sun, a hot Antivan sun, being dragged through the mud of Ferelden. 

The Frostbacks sharp lines and craggy, jagged, and brutally sharp teeth slashed the skyline. Each step brought him closer to go and be the sun in the dark one last time. Even though Laran wouldn’t be there in the dark with him, he was still there, a quiet plea on a faded piece of parchment. 

XXX

Darkspawn stank, they always had, their rot wasn’t even cloying like long dead corpses, but something so foul that it was never meant to burn the sinus of mortals. Alone, Zevran still plowed through them. Old, he still plowed through them, too fast, too determined. There was only enough food, water and healing poultices to keep him going until he was certain he had caught up. Some part of him said he would just...know. The first caverns he carried through, barely a single scratch, arrows had been dodged or sliced clear out of the air, a whirling dervish of blades making a spinning wall and nothing could touch him. He was death, dancing a wild caper through the tunnels. Ancient feeling habits bid that he gather any healing items, stretch his own as long as possible. He wasn’t there yet, knew it, knew it somehow. 

How many miles had he torn through like the spears of the sun at high noon in the Drylands through a broken roof? Zevran’s last healing poultice was gone he realized as he fished for it...some...time ago. With a grunt he picked himself up, as the miles had worn on, the rooms searched and cleaned of their filth, the darkness banished for a brief moment, he had stopped being untouchable hours ago. Pausing at an intersection, he leaned heavily on a piece of stone, a stalagmite that wasn’t gooey with darkspawn Taint and their poison, catching his breath.

A roll of his wrist, stiff, old, worn, the joint protested the rigors he put it through, but Zevran rolled it anyway, the blade twirling lazily, flinging off ichor and gore. “Tchk, stop your complaints, there will be enough time for rest when you are dead, you old fool.”

With that, he pushed off, resuming his march, ignoring the long swaths of blood he trailed like streamers, the smear on the rough stone from his shoulder nothing to pay any mind to.

XXX

Like vultures the darkspawn had pulled back. Waiting him out it seemed. Waiting for him to crash, because he was already burning. Then they would feast upon his corpse, a thought that even still could make him shudder. At least, that seemed likely, there were much fewer of them here. Dizzy, he sank to his knees, panting, unable to keep upright. In the brief jarring impact of stone travelling up his thighs to his spine, Zevran flashed back to the old nightmare, the one he lived with for the last several years. A shambling, empty Laran. That was the nightmare, over and over and over, the one that came within days of his long time lover-friend-companion-partner in crime leaving. The one, that if he was truthful with himself, had plagued him years before Laran left, the nightmare that portended what could be, what lay in wait if he wasn’t swift. 

With a firm shake of his head, Zevran tossed off the shredded night-terror, laughing madly to himself, “It would be typical, would it not?” Groaning, Zevran forced himself back to his feet, tying off the worst of the newest injuries with a battered piece of cloth, fouled and torn, a bit of stitching on it familiar. “Bloody typical.”

And if true, as unlikely as it would be, Zevran had to do one last thing - he had to be sure first.

XXX

Another room, another great and grand cavern. Or perhaps the openness was his sight going? Perfectly possible, he was running on will alone, his light dimming... Zevran’s hands clenched the hilts, the pain and stiffness shocking him momentarily awake from the half-sprawl. Hissing he pushed himself back up - the only dying laying down _he_ would ever do would be in a bed. And since Laran hadn’t had the good common sense to let him accompany him back towards Ferelden, that option was gone. 

There came a scuffing shuffling clank, causing his eyes to snap upwards, struggling to ready himself to meet the new foe. Instead hope burned, lancing through him with its twin - horror. Kallio, when she was naught but a girl with skinned, grubby knees and pigtail braids, would have tried to offer up a cup of coffee to put her father back to sorts. But no amount of healing, coffee, prayers or magic could ever put him back together again. Like the story of the little painted egg-man who had fallen and broken to pieces. 

But the hope, the hope that he could free Laran, that in some small way, they could go down the way that he had intended - near each other, shoulder to shoulder, back to back, all that mattered that they were near - that was there. It fueled him, making him laugh, truly laugh, with that blind and wildly burning abandon. The sound brought what was left of Laran closer, the unhealthy light of the Deep Roads showing just what the years had wrought and ravaged. So many signs of darkspawn seeking to take his big shem down, so many clearly failed attempts. He didn’t care that Laran must have done...things...once his mind turned to its state of forgetting. 

Smiling warmly, sun on a face that likely had long forgotten what sunlight was, “ _Mi amor_ , there you are. Too good to perish, too stubborn to die.” Slowly straightening, though his spine wanted nothing more than to hunch and curl in on the weakness and pain in his ruined body, “You will forgive my tardiness, yes?”

The words were lost on his Laran, his Warden, who shuffled closer and closer to come and stand before him. Zevran readied himself to attack, to give one last push, a final rally to give his lover release. But Laran halted, staring blankly at him, not attacking or making any further motions for a moment, until his hand reached out, grasping and taking away a dagger... Almost like he was still there, some shadow. 

Surprised, Zevran felt the softness well up in his breast, that bittersweet agonizing pang. Sunken blue eyes still burned - dully, but they were there. Laran stared at him, wordless, unable to speak, unable to respond, but Zevran couldn’t help himself, couldn’t stop his hand from reaching up to cup the grizzled and scarred cheek. With a brush of a bloody thumb over a gnawed and split bottom lip, he knew he would fall soon, but he wanted to look at Laran a little longer, even in this state. 

A still strong hand jerked, clamped tight around his wrist, dragging his arm into place, making Zevran look down, startled, but it took all his strength to remain standing. Laran had angled the blade so it would punch between ribs, into lungs and straight into the still tortuously beating heart. Somehow, deep in there, Laran still was, was pleading for the release he had been denied. Another jerky motion and Zevran’s other blade was pressed to his own neck. Pouring the years and love into his look, Zevran summoned a flash of strength, Laran’s hand on his, guiding the blade into his big shem at the same moment pain cut his air off.

It was mercy of a sort, relief, and he was so tired, they both were as their last dance came to an end.


End file.
